An analysis of what went wrong from a leadership perspective:

Matt’s Hubris
Three goals was not enough this week for our fearless leader: more on that below. So my performance was called ‘mediocre’. Oh well. Instead I shall turn my hand to the pen. Having recently travelled to Warwick for a week’s worth of lectures on Leadership, let’s break down Matt’s leadership style and discuss what went well and what, unfortunately, led to Matt’s hubris (lemon of the match).

Situation: Half-time team talk, 4-0 to South. Matt A delivers his speech.
Speech: ‘Something something…I want 8 goals scored’
Outcome of speech: City come back with 3 goals. 4-3 overall.

Analysis:
The half time team talk focused on ‘scoring 8 goals in total’ – whilst this is a good management strategy (focusing on the task/objective), it fails to captivate the imagination of how and why this goal should be achieved. By focusing on the task at hand and taking a directive-style (ie. you must do ‘this’ by ‘then’) you will gain compliance, but not much further. Instead, reframing the intent of the message and layering imagery and rhetoric into the speech would make it much more motivating and captivating for the team, i.e. “I know we can score more goals. Can you imagine the satisfaction this will bring to us all when we’re in the pub later reminiscing about our victory? Are we City, or are we SOUTH?” By focusing on a vision and creating a realistic image of a beneficial outcome this inspires and othewise increases both motivation and productivity. Also, by using collective words such as ‘we’, it creates a shared-vision, inducing team-behaviours such as more passes of the ball etc. all leading to victories.

Regardless of your leadership style, research has shown two vital qualities are required in leadership: humility and will (persistence) [Collins, 2001]. Let’s hope Matt will be humble enough to wear the lemon apron next week(!) Pictures please.

Conclusion: Cause of hubris = using historical data to guess the future of an imperfect system with many variables (hockey match).